We recently launched Base, a secure, low-cost, developer friendly Ethereum L2. Our vision is to collectively work towards an ambitious goal: bringing the next billion users onchain. One of our values from the beginning has been “Base is for everyone” and we’re so grateful to see builders around the world starting to make Base their home.

Alongside the announcement of Base, we also announced the Base Ecosystem Fund – a pool of capital to invest in early stage (pre-seed to seed) projects building on Base, combined with dedicated support from the Base team to help teams succeed. Over the last three weeks, we’ve seen a huge amount of interest to be a part of the Base Ecosystem Fund, with a wide range of ideas. 

Alongside this incredible set of inbound proposals, we’ve spent time over the last few weeks talking about what we believe will be critical to help the onchain economy grow. Based on those conversations, we’re extending a Request for Builders to work on these critical areas. 

We are fascinated by the deep thought we’re seeing in decentralized stablecoin design and are particularly interested in ‘flatcoins’ – stablecoins that track the rate of inflation, enabling users to have stability in purchasing power while also having resiliency from the economic uncertainty caused by the legacy financial system. We also welcome other forms of ‘flatcoins’ that do not peg to fiat but rather fill the space between fiat pegged coins and volatile crypto assets. With the recent challenges in our global banking system, we believe these explorations are more important than ever.

We’re excited to hear from teams that are exploring their own system of stablecoin(s)/ flatcoin(s), or focusing on ways to increase adoption of already existing systems such as Reflexer/RAI, Spot/Ampleforth, Frax/FPIS, Olympus DAO, etc.

We believe that onchain is the next online and that decentralized identity and reputation will play a critical role in defining each individual’s onchain persona. 

We believe there is an opportunity to create more trust onchain through reputation protocols that natively support onchain entities. This could look like a FICO or Google page rank type score on ENS names, ratings/reviews for merchants, and other measures that help build trust onchain. 

We’re excited to hear from teams that are thinking deeply about what reputation and credit looks like in an onchain native way and how we can leverage these systems, while preserving user privacy and autonomy.

Trust in centralized exchanges took a hit following the collapse of FTX. With the rise of Ethereum L2s like Base, it’s finally possible to have the throughput needed for a more advanced exchange while also eliminating counterparty risk through self custody. While we believe that existing exchange offerings (e.g. AMMs) are incredibly useful and a critical DeFi primitive, we also believe LOBs have a role, particularly for professional traders and institutions. 

We are curious to see how builders approach designing these types of decentralized LOB exchanges on or around Base. The high throughput of Base opens up significant new opportunities for designing new mechanisms for spot trading, limit orders, options, perpetuals, and more. And, builders can use open source tooling like OP Stack to build L3s that give them even more speed and control, potentially enabling even deeper liquidity, still accessible through L2. 

As the DeFi ecosystem continues to grow, we need better tools that enable users and developers to keep up with the pace of innovation, while keeping their funds safe. 

This includes tools that can protect against smart contract code vulnerabilities or protocol logic errors (e.g., self-service security testing tools, auditing services), tools to help mitigate the impact of ecosystem attacks (e.g. threat prevention, circuit breakers, & incident response systems), and final onchain insurance and cover protocols, or any other offering that can be a critical backstop for users in the event of smart contract failure.

We’re excited to hear from builders that are building systems, protocols, and tools that make it possible for every users to store all of their money onchain. We believe that this infrastructure is absolutely essential for bringing the next billion people in.

If you’d like to build one of these ideas on Base, on the Base Ecosystem Fund application, simply select the requested idea you’ve chosen to build in the “Request for Builders” drop-down field. If you’ve already applied, please feel free to submit again with the dropdown chosen. 

Recipients of funding will have a first look at new product features on Base, along with direct support from the Base core development and Ecosystem team members in the Base developer Discord. We look forward to hearing from you.

Note: Please do not feel obligated to work on one of these ideas in order to build on Base or apply for funding from the Base Ecosystem Fund. To borrow a line from our friends at YC: 

“Responding to an RFS will never be the deciding factor in who we fund. As we've said many times, the people matter more than the idea. Plus you can't do a good job on something unless you're genuinely interested in it. So don't apply with an idea described in an RFS if there's some other idea you'd rather work on. You're more likely to get funded to work on the idea you actually like.”